a mad man fallen
by Lissy Stage
Summary: It'd been soon after they'd arrested him that the rain had finally let out and the petrichor had been left to hang in the air. Gen. Written for round one of the Hunger Games Fanfic Competition.


**Title**: a mad man fallen

**Challenge**/**Prompt**: Written specifically for The Hunger Games Fanfic Competition, round one (word: petrichor; emotion: fury; character: Percy Weasley; weapon: a silver tongue; and genre: crime).

**Word Count**: About 1200

**Character**(**s**): OFC, OMC, Ron, and Percy.

**Disclaimer**: This work of fiction is in no way connected to the author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling. Harry Potter is owned by her, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

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><p>It'd been soon after they'd arrested him that the rain had finally let out and the petrichor had been left to hang in the air.<p>

The rain hadn't quite been rain, though. Really, it had been a light drizzle, at best. The type to do nothing more than merely moisten your skin and outer clothing.

They'd Apparated to the Ministry quickly thereafter, practicing a special sort of precaution. They'd read him his rights and gotten the nods and yeses they'd needed to ensure he'd remain unable to slip through the cracks yet again, before they'd finally settled into an interrogation room.

Lazaro Pacheko, birthed and named around the winter solstice 35 years ago. He'd personally commented on his hatred of the cold on the bloodstained walls of a victim of his; thirteen-year old Muggle-born witch by the name of Sandra Parker; tall, blonde, pretty.

Lazaro stares back at his interrogators, a twitching made plain near the corners of his mouth. Would he open his mouth and laugh, showing off dirty, rotting teeth? Would he grin with a toothless grin, a mad twinkle in his eyes, hands wringing themselves at his place at the table?

Auror Lindsey Binds doesn't especially know about that, just the cold hard facts. She's never been one for subtlety; that's always been the job of Ronald Weasley or Neville Longbottom or whoever's temporary partner she'd recently been assigned as.

Lazaro allows that smile that'd been tugging restlessly at his lips, a small toddler in want of the attention of its neglectful parent, to stretch across his face and leans forward in his seat. Binds wonders if he's testing the length and security of his chains, as if planning an elaborate escape from the Ministry of Magic. As if he felt himself truly capable of doing so.

She hopes he would try it.

"I guess the best way to describe the feeling," Lazaro starts, eyes wide and glazed, caught in the sharing of a precious memory. He seems to want his audience enraptured by his every word, the silver tongue of a slippery snake ready to strike at his beck-and-call, but Binds just feels a dull, abject boredom. And maybe that familiar spark of violent, twisting rage that wracks her insides, but she has that under control. Occlumency was a skill she'd mastered long ago, and no longer would her emotions rule her underneath their steel fist. "Well... it's as sudden and freeing as the rain, if you catch my drift. No?"

Instead of offering any visible sign of confirmation, Lindsey chooses instead to merely stare at him, face wiped of any emotional trace.

It's when Lazaro raises a hand and stretches it across the expanse of the table purely for reaction fodder that she finally breaks her silence, tone somewhat monotonic from the force from which she chokes back any and all feelings of anger and resentment and rage.

"If I see yer hand move away from where ye sitting once more," her Irish brogue filters through her voice as smooth as butter, an unsurprising transition from nothing to slight irritation that captures Pacheko's attention fairly quickly, though seems to exasperate her current partner, by the way her shifts in his seat. "Ye won't be left with the ability to touch, Pacheko."

The taller Weasley, Ronald, to her left, moves to settle a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her, though Binds effectively shrugs it off before it even makes contact.

"Cool it, Binds," he whispers harshly as he drops his hand out of sight of both her and Pacheko. And though he makes the effort to conceal it, she knows without a single glance back that he is currently curling his hand into a fist beneath the table at her show of insubordination. She was barely out of the Academy, after all.

Pacheko, in front of them, is gazing off to a spot on the wall, expression strangely faraway in childlike wonder and interest at whatever has managed to capture his attention.

With a pointed clearing of his throat, Weasley shocks Pacheko into locking his gaze onto his. Just as swiftly as if he hadn't just been caught lost in his thoughts, Pacheko slowly grins again and places his head on the palms of his hands.

"Ah, yes, the rain," he mutters slowly. "It holds many shapes and forms, as you both undoubtedly know." the fiendish hue to his smile tells them all they need to know about his particular associations of the rain. "It could easily be a light drizzle, or the beginnings of a hurricane. Just water pouring down from the grey, puffy clouds above, and squalls taking hold of the unwary at times of intermission.

"I find that it's the rush that really gets me then, you know. I love idea and feeling of holding someone's life in my hands. It's with this that I have the capability to work my magic, so the speak, for the beautiful, lithe body of a girl just emerging from prepubescence is my canvas."

Binds has to take a moment to calm down, that same twisted rage rushing through her in its need for dominance.

"And what about the girl?" Auror Weasley questions the worthless piece of shit before him. He leans back in his seat, looking all as if he were enjoying a cup of tea with a mate.

"Oh, her?" Pacheko scoffs, his knuckles turning white as he wrings his hands in a show of discomfort. "I threw her in a river."

"A river?" Binds asks incredulously, wracking her brain for a river nearest to where they'd picked up the wizard. "What river, exactly?"

"Oh, ya know," Pacheko waves a hand vaguely to the right, encompassing more than a couple cardinal directions. "The one near the beauty parlour on Victoria."

It's when they exit the room that they finally see the other Weasley lurking just beyond the room, hidden behind charmed, magically enforced walls that act as the means for observation.

"I don't like this," he mutters quietly, head ducked down to write a note to the Minister, for this was too easy to be anything but a trap or a false lead. "I'll be contacting Head Auror Potter," his gaze lingers on his younger brother before flitting to Binds. "It'll be a tough night, locating a non-existent river near the non-existent parlour on Victoria, but he'll crack soon enough."

When Binds finds herself back in Auror Weasley's office, her gaze fixates on a blurry corner of the ceiling.

"Good work in there," Weasley mindlessly assures her. She merely grunts in acknowledgment, not especially focussing on the words of a man who can't wait to get her out of his partner's chair, of the office he shares with his partner. "I mean it, you know."

"Whatever," she scoffs, chair scraping against the linoleum floor as she stands up. The walk to the door is a quiet one, her footfalls muffled by the sounds of Weasley rummaging through his desk in wait of their subsequent orders. "You did well, too, I guess, Weasley."

She doesn't turn nor look back at his expression as the door slams shut behind her.

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><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

Hopefully, if you made it to the author's note, you at least liked this fic the tiniest bit :P


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